Armstrong. Otago—Not uncommon on both the East and West Coasts, Buchanan, Petrie! Thomson, Hamilton! Stewart Island: Paterson's Inlet, Kirk.
A well-marked plant, easily recognised by the coriaceous habit and short and broad rounded pinnæ attached by a broad base. Like L. dura, it is a purely littoral plant, never found beyond the influence of the sea-spray.
8. L. alpina, Spreng. Syst. Veg. iv. 62.—Rhizome long, slender, branched, creeping, clothed with chaffy ferruginous scales. Stipes 2—6 in. long or more, slender, red-brown, smooth and polished, sparingly scaly. Fronds tufted along the rhizome; sterile shorter than the fertile, 4–18 in. long including the stipes, ⅓–⅔ in. broad, often spreading or decumbent, linear or linear-lanceolate, narrowed to the base, dark-green, pinnatifid or pinnate towards the base, texture varying from thick and coriaceous to almost membranous. Pinnæ numerous, close-set, short, spreading, ⅕–⅓ in. long, attached by a broad base, ovate-oblong or triangular-oblong to linear-oblong, obtuse, entire or obscurely crenate. Fertile fronds erect, pinnate throughout; pinnæ numerous, rather distant, shorter and narrower than the sterile, linear or linear-oblong, obtuse, spreading or deflexed or sometimes curved upwards. Sori copious, covering the whole under-surface.—Hook. Fil. Exot. t. 32; Sp. Fil. iii. 16; Hook. f. Fl. Antarct. ii. 393, t. 150; Fl. Nov. Zel. ii. 30; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 368; Hook. f. Bak. Syn. Fil. 178; Benth. Fl. Austral. vii. 786; Thoms. N.Z. Ferns, 66; Field, N.Z. Ferns, 105, t. 17, f. 5, 5a. L. pumila, Raoul, Choix, 9, t. 2a; Hook. Sp. Fil. iii. 17; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. ii. 28; Handb. N.Z. Fl. 367. L. linearis. Col. in Tasmanian Journ. Nat. Sci. (1845) 16. L. parvifolia. Col. in Trans. N.Z. Inst. xx. (1888) 224. Stegania alpina, R. Br. Prodr. 152. Blechnum alpinum, Metten. Fil. Hort. Bot. Lips. 64. Polypodium penna-marina, Poir. in Lam. Encycl. v. 520.
North and South Islands, Chatham Islands, Stewart Island, Antipodes Island, Macquarie Island: From the Upper Thames Valley and Rotorua southwards, abundant to the south of the East Cape. Sea-level to 4000 ft.
Also abundant in temperate South America, Australia, and Tasmania. Raoul's L. pumilla differs from the type in the more membranous fronds and distinctly crenate pinnæ, but is without doubt a trivial state produced by growing in an unusually sheltered and shaded locality. Specimens exactly resembling Raoul's plate can be found without any difficulty in both islands, and can generally be traced on the spot into ordinary L. alpina. I look upon it as a form too inconstant to keep up even as a variety. L. parvifolia, Col., of which I possess a type specimen forwarded by Mr. Colenso himself, is clearly the same, a view which is also taken by Mr. Baker (Ann. of Bot. v. (1891) 220).
9. L. capensis, Willd. Sp. Plant. v. 291.—Rhizome short, stout, often woody, erect or inclined, sometimes prostrate, clothed at the top with large chestnut-brown scales. Stipes stout, long or short, usually densely scaly at the base. Fronds numerous, very variable in size, usually from 1–4 ft., but in dry exposed places
